Aparkolypse: Hauge Homestead Park

Though they're on opposite sides of the lake, Hauge Homestead Park is no Solange Knowles compared to Silver Lake Park's Beyonce. It's a great park with a surprising amount of fun things to do and it's not as crowded as its lacustrine sister.

Fun fact: the park is named after "John Hauge, a Norwegian Pioneer who settled along Silver Lake in the late 1800s."

Play

Though there is plenty of traffic on 19th Ave SE, little wanderers are well shielded from wandering into traffic. The toys were in good shape and a lot of fun. 

 

Amenities/Facilities

Parking is adequate here. Fully functioning bathrooms and a water fountain are between the lot and the play area.There is also a paved path around the park where you can stroll or play Pokemon Go while on your longboard skateboard and not almost get leveled by small children who are also not paying attention to where they're going.

Plenty of picnic tables and a medium-sized grassy area provide plenty of place to play and eat. The picnic shelter has a grill, running water, electricity, and is, of course, reservable.

Hauge Homestead Park has a small unimproved beach (unlike the big sandy beach of Silver Lake Park) with a little dock for small watercraft, like stand up paddle boards for people who totally don't eat it right as they're about to get back on land, much to the amusement of several children. A bit north of that is a fishing dock.

Review

We had never heard of this place before we started doing our tour, but we are glad we came. It's a great place to stop by like we did or host a smaller group event. It's also a good place to teach otherwise intelligent seven year-olds with a new weird payphone fascination that you cannot make a 60 cent phone call using 15 cents.

 

Aparkolypse: Walter E. Hall Park

After you manage ducking the crossfire on Casino Road, get your family to the big and beautiful Walter E. Hall Park, another fine Everett facility. It's close to Boeing and all of its attending attractions, so there's no excuse to miss this place.

We bet the park stays busy, though there is plenty of parking all along the various features to accommodate large gatherings. Solid bathrooms are available right by the play area, and they have electrical plugs available on the exterior! They also have syringe collection repositories inside for needle-based drug users, who likely aren't the audience for this blog.

Adult Exercise Equipment

Walter E. Hall is the first park we came across with fitness equipment for adults. This park has an upright rowing machine and an elliptical machine, which was very entertaining to watch the kids try to figure out.

Sport Fields

The further away you get from claustrophobic Seattle, the greater possibility your park has wide open fields. The play fields here are huge and beautifully maintained. Several informal soccer games were going on, though you could easily have multiple official matches run simultaneously. We were very impressed with the baseball/softball field and the vast grassy areas.

Skate Park

We nearly overlooked the skate park, but had to stop for some pictures on the way out (Google assembled this panorama). It's down closer to the golf course, setting up in our mind some ideas for a hackneyed 1980s battle-of-generations comedy.  We found this video on YouTube to give you as sense of how people use the skate area for non-photographic purposes.

We didn't survey the golf course. This is the official website. You can also rent the meeting and event space; details are here.

Play

For such a huge facility, there isn't much play equipment. For bigger kids, there's this climbing thing:

The ground of both play areas is covered in fake grass, a choice we hadn't seen yet in our park tour. The junior playground has a nautical theme - standard, yet appropriate for Everett - with a low climbing structure and some scattered toys.

Review

The playground is a little mediocre, but we loved every other aspect of this park. Walter E. Hall (no relation) Park is fabulously maintained with many high quality features.

Bonus: Time Traveling

Sure the kids had fun on the play equipment and out on the field, but what they really enjoyed attempting to use a payphone. They were baffled when their father wouldn't give them money to call their mother at work on it in light of their already paying $150 a month to have portable telephony. Their love of payphones has not ebbed.